] Given the quality of the writing in the ] blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People ] are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. ] It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are ] met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs. In ] that case, their rejection of my view is quite ] understandable. The author of the L.A. Times editorial "Google and God's Mind" which seemed to make several (in my opinion short sighted) arguments against digitizing books has come out swinging at the Bloggosphere. As MemeStreams appears first on a Google Search for "Google and God's Mind" its entirely possible that my comments factored in here, although fortunately they don't seem to be referenced specifically. Writers in the Blogosphere can be rather harsh to public figures. This public figure is rather harsh back. I'm not sure what the point of all of this bickering is. I don't care which one of you is an idiot. NoteWorthy's point that access is a mostly solved problem in the west is a good one, but it doesn't lead to the conclusion that digitizing works has no value, nor does this author's straw man argument about where else to spend the money. You'll see books mostly go away in your lifetime. There are other, harder problems to solve about how to make the most of information resources available to you. I'd rather think about the later, but I'm still a fan of the former. |